Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 12, 2011

When the Communists seized control of Russia in 1917, one of their highest priorities was to abolish the jury system. The imperial Russian jury system, which was created under Czar Alexander II in 1864, was very similar to the Anglo-Saxon model: Juries had the power to decide both the facts and the law.

The Bolsheviks did away with the jury, replacing it with so-called People?s Tribunals composed of a judge and a small panel of ?assessors? ? all of whom were appointed by the Communist Party and expected to follow its discipline. By the 1940s, the Soviet system had achieved a conviction rate of nearly 100 percent.

Given the constitutional guarantees of due process and trial by jury, our federal criminal justice system should differ significantly from the Soviet version. One would expect this to be so ? and one would be wrong.

Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute points out that only three percent of federal criminal cases go to trial, and of that number ?the defendant wins once in every 212 [trials].? This isn?t because federal courts are singularly efficient at convicting the guilty, but rather because they, like their Soviet predecessors, are designed to vindicate the State, rather than do justice.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.